The silence is deafening

I finally got off my butt and had our furnace serviced for the upcoming (OK - we live in Ontario - we've been using the furnace for a couple of months) winter. Isn't today the first day of winter? Anyway, the furnace is 23 years old and for the last couple of years, the service technicians have been strongly suggesting that we replace the furnace. Not ready to jump into things, we kept putting it off. I had visions of HUGE expenses and wasn't prepared to cough up a lot of money.

The furnace

Besides getting a wee lecture on keeping the filters clean, everything was fine. We have a maintenance plan and the service guy was out the door in quick order. But NOT before I agreed to have a salesperson come visit the next day which was yesterday. Like the service tech the day before, the salesperson arrived an hour EARLY.

After walking through the information, I decided that it was definitely worth our while to get a new furnace and A/C (although we don't use it - but for resale at some point down the road) and it was only going to cost and extra $100 (more or less per month). That's not bad and way better than I envisioned. In total, that appointment lasted a couple of hours and we got the pre-inspection done, the parts are ordered and the install date is set for Christmas Eve. Yipppeeeee!!!!

I did note during the day that I was cold. Colder than usual, but it was a sunny day and the furnace doesn't kick in a lot when the sun shines. However, by bedtime, I thought I better have a look at the thermostat to see if they had changed the temperature when the inspection guys were messing around with stuff.

Oh boy - big trouble. The thermostat is DEAD. I've searched the sides for an On/off switch and I don't see anything. It's quite loose on the wall where it wasn't before and I bet with all the inspecting, they've loosened or disconnected something. Guess what that means - we have NO FURNACE.

The thermostat is dead

So at 10 PM last night, I was on the phone trying to book a service call. The dispatcher came back with an appointment on Sunday. WAIT A MINUTE - it's winter and you want me to live without a furnace for two entire days?  I think not! I did manage to get a service call for tonight at 7 PM. It's amazing how NOISY the HVAC system in the house. It's so quiet with no fan blowing. Let's hope that the guy is one hour early like the previous two appointments!

In the meantime, I guess I'll be resorting to an extra sweater. Thankfully, the weather is going above zero today with sunshine so that'll make the house warm. The pilot light in our gas fireplace is out and I'm terribly afraid of anything gas. So when the guys come tonight, I'm going to get them to relight the pilot light!

Here's the deal - if you've been hesitating to get a new furnace, I'd go for it! Yes - it's extra money each month, but hopefully, the new system will be way more efficient. I mean - the current system is 23 years old. There's bound to be new. It means a whole lot of changes in the furnace area - new ductwork, new venting, new, new, new. It appears (and we know this as the gospel truth) that when a builder builds a home, they put crap in and don't care about most things. There are a lot of things wrong with the way our furnace was installed. We're lucky that we got 23 years out of it!

As a result of all that, I lost several hours that I was going to work on my UFOs, but it's all going to be worth it in the end. If we survive today! Way back when I lived in Quebec, my furnace died on me. Not a fun day. I had just had my wisdom teeth taken out and when my friend dropped me off at my house, I was flying higher than a kite. The house was frigid - it was January in Quebec. And to top it off? The dog had destroyed a couple of pillows so there was pillow fluff all over the house!! Now how can you ever forget a day like that? Fortunately, my friend stayed and cleaned up the pillow mess, called the furnace repair people and put me to bed! Oh, what fun!

I've been busy at the long arm for the last couple of days as well and happy to report that all the customer quilts for the year are quilted! I still have to sew on a binding later today.

Customer quilt - DONE

Customer quilt - DONE

And here's the third one.

Custome quilt - DONE

Things were going so merrily along with that third quilt - I should be done by dinner. BUT when I advanced the quilt to do the third row, I almost had a heart attack. What the heck???? This is what I saw. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

Eyelash stitching on the back

This is not good and it was for half of the row. That is a good thing as you'll see. I looked at the first part of the row. Hmm - no eyelash, but not good stitching. That was for about 3/8 of a row. The first 1/8 was fine.

Better but not good enough

I finished the quilt. Then without removing it from the long arm, I unrolled it and got out a chair and the seam ripping tools and I ripped and I ripped and I ripped. It took as long to get rid of that perfectly stitched 1/8 as it did to get rid of the bad stitching. I wasn't sure how close I could get the quilting matched up - well - I could get it perfect, but I thought it would be better to rip out the entire row. It took FOREVER!!!

Ripping and ripping

I've no idea why that happened. Unless it was at at a bobbin change and the bobbin wasn't inserted properly. You can believe that I watched that quilt like a hawk to see if it happened again. It did not.

Once the row was ripped out, I rolled the quilt back up. You see, little tiny registration marks are added as each row is quilted. That made it pretty simple to get that row back in place.

Thre's a tiny blue dot as a registration mark

And now the quilt is lined back up after I adjusted the computer to match the row on the quilt although all rows were the same - I restitched the second row.

The second row is ready to restitch

The stitching should look like this. AHA - you can't see the stitching and that's what I was aiming for.

Really good stitching

That put me back a lot and I was so focused on the audiobook and the ripping, that I didn't notice the temperature in the house had dropped until late! Oh yes - yesterday was a comedy of errors all around. I did go for a walk, but I was almost afraid to go out in case something happened. By all standards, it was a boring walk and I was just fine with that.


I did get some sewing done for me  - not a lot, but I did get some. I managed to get the sleeve made for the plastic bottom in that Weekender bag that Shelly finished off for me.

The sleeve for the plastic bag bottom

And it's inserted into the bag. Done!

The bottom is in the bag

On that note, I'm out of here! I did accomplish a fair bit of paperwork yesterday. I see there's more to do today - yippee!!! And then I have another quilt to tackle this afternoon. Oh - there's loads to say about the quilt (don't worry - it doesn't belong to any customer). You'll get the whole scoop tomorrow - should I survive the deep freeze which is our house! Hmm - this would be the perfect day to box up the junk in the office. I need to keep moving in order to stay warm. Let's see what happens.

Have a super day!!!!

Ciao!!

I could have been poisoned!

We had a super meeting yesterday morning.  It was the first official meeting of the West End Modern Quilt Guild.  And we are now an official member of the Modern Quilt Guild.  We're almost at the capacity of the tier for which we signed up. We do have a few spots left from what our initial goal was but not everyone was at this meeting although we did people sign up even if they weren't there. And that's on the first meeting!  I'm super excited about the response and can't wait to get to know these ladies better although I do know a fair number of them already.

Then I was home to get down to work!  I scanned the meager contents of our fridge and found something for lunch. If ever there is a major event and we can't get to the stores, we'll die from lack of food. And if there is ever a major event where we lose electricity, we won't lose any food!  The pros and cons of a nearly empty fridge. But we could drink because who would want to waste all that beer and wine!

After lunch, I felt like I needed a little something sweet. I went to my chocolate stash and pulled the LAST item from the stash. I've decided to NOT buy more - I'll probably die from lack of chocolate and if there is a power outage, there are no reserves anymore!  Anyway, I pulled out the last item and laid it on my cutting table. Then I had a really good look at it.  Oh, my!  This is a critical situation.

Ah - check out the expiry date

Yes, indeed. Check out that expiry date.  Sept 15, 2017. And what was yesterday's date?  Sept 15, 2017. Good thing I discovered that because well I could have been poisoned eating chocolate past its expiration date!!!  Phew!

As I was merrily sewing, I was using one of my UFO projects as my ender and leader. I grabbed one of the blocks and OH! This doesn't seem quite right.

Does this look right to you?

 Indeed when I look at the good one (on the right) and the one on the left, there's a mistake.

Ooopsy!!

 So I ripped off the last section I had sewn on. But when I went to sew it back on, I realized that I had made another mistake on the block so had to rip off the light section as well. Then it was ready to sew back together.  I hope there aren't other mistakes in the other blocks.

I'm getting down to nearly nothing left of this light fabric. I still have a few blocks to go (forgot to take a picture), but I should be OK. But just!  How's that for calculating fabric by the seat of your pants!

Hopefully enough fabric to finish!

I'm not even sure how many blocks I'm making, but the end quilt will be a lap size - or should be.  I have one more strip to sew on after I'm done adding the one that I'm currently sewing on which is a strip of the light which you didn't see. And that last strip has those silly little corner things that have to be cut, marked and sewn on BEFORE that strip can be sewn to the blocks. I'm not out of the woods on getting this done, but I'm getting closer!!!

I'll give you a total recap of what else got done yesterday when I do my Motivational Monday report.  Let's just say that if you're focused - a lot can happen!

We did go out to dinner last night. DH had been away the entire week and previous weekend and I talked his ear off - poor guy! I had no one else to talk to in the evening all week and there was a lot stored up waiting to be said! I wasn't quite like the couple I saw on vacation - it wasn't 100/0, but well maybe 80/20  - OH GOD!

As I was madly working yesterday, I had to clear off the ironing board. So yes it's clear.

Ironing board - clear

 And where did everything go???   I did a CLEAN SWEEP - yes right onto the floor. This is stuff that needs to be dealt with in the near future, but I had more pressing things to take care of yesterday!!

Clean sweep - right onto the floor

 And yes - I did find another block that needed to be fixed! This one still has to be ripped out. No time for that yesterday!

One more block to fix

 And that chocolate?  Oh yes - it was good!  And it's all gone and right on time!

Yum yum!

So no more chocolate - I can deal with that!  I can!  I will!

And on that note, I have a couple of very anxious girls who are begging to go to the park!  We're off!

Have a super day!!!!

Ciao!!!!

The GREAT Canadian Rip OUT

I think the title of this post should be "What I learned today".  I learned a lot and well while learning can be fun - this kind of learning - not so fun.

You see, I had my urgent quilt loaded on the long arm. Remember?

Quilt on the long arm - ready to quilt

Well, look where the quilt is now.....................

Quilt off the long arm - ready to be ripped apart

I came home, all fired up to get started. I had messed around with some quilting designs and I thought I was good to go.  I did part of the first row before dinner and then back at it to finish that first row. Looks good - I'm pleased with the results.

I roll the quilt to the next row and OH NO - say it isn't so!!!!!!!!!!!!!!    Well, the quilting design that I had chosen, while generic and multi-directional, wasn't going to fit in the second row of the quilt. There is a design element in the second row of the quilt that is not quite the same as the rest of the quilt. When I loaded the quilt, I loaded the bottom first although it did cross my mind to load it the other way. If I would have loaded the top first, then I would have had no problem as the top would set the pattern for the rest of the quilt. Starting at the bottom - well -not so good.   Come to think of it - starting at the top may have had the same issue and then I would have had many more rows to rip out.  What I needed to do what start the planning with the second row and then the pattern would have rippled out.

Either way - GRRRRRRR!!!!!!   I just stared at the quilt in complete silence. Too stunned to even say a bad word. Can I make this work?  No - the pattern was too specific - there was no way.  I thought of several hours of standing over the long arm ripping those stitches out - some of it stitch in the ditch. My back ached at the thought. So I took the quilt right off the long arm and sat down to do the ripping out.  There are five sections - two are ripped out, three to go.

Let's just say that that quilt is no longer urgent. There is no way that I can get the ripping done and requilt it before tomorrow.  I'll just have to fess up that the quilt I entered was not ready!  Oh well - it happens.

But did I learn anything from this?  Lots!

What I learned:
1. If you are entering a challenge, don't wait until the absolute last possible minute to get it done
2. Don't enter a quilt in a show unless it is mostly done - well this one was - sort of
3. When choosing a custom quilt design, think about the ENTIRE quilt, not just one block

I  probably (no most definitely) will remember number 3.  Number 1 and 2 - nope - I doubt I'll change!

It was just one of those RIPPING good days as I had another project that needed some major ripping. I had agreed to repair a quilt for someone. Don't go there!  Just don't!  

Quilt to be repaird

Now what needed to be fixed?  The family dog had a play date with the quilt - the dog won!   The binding got attacked.

Rip in the binding

Even bigger rip in the binding

In total, I think there were 5 different spots where the binding had been chewed. Some worse than others and they might even be more spots.  How to fix this and still make the quilt look good?

I decided (and with the owner's blessing) to remove the binding.

Removing the hand stitching

 Let's just say that this person was afraid those stitches were going to come out (sort of like me!). It took an hour to rip that hand stitching out.  Next step was to rip the machine stitching out to completely remove the binding.

Binding completely off the quilt

Next up, I pressed the binding (leaving it folded in half) and took most of the bits of thread off the binding.

Pressed and most of the threads removed.

The next step is will be trimming about 1/4" off all four sides of the quilt to get rid of those chewed spots. (Again with the owner's blessing) Then I'll fix the binding, removing all the chewed bits and rejoining as necessary.  Serge the edges of the quilt top as there is NO quilting in that border.  If I'm missing some binding at the end, I do have that piece that I got from someone. Same fabric - just slightly different (not faded) color.  Then sew the binding on (and it's narrow - 2 inches, not 2 1/2" like I prefer).  Next up will be the fun task of rehand stitching the binding down. A lot of work - I know, but I couldn't see any other way to repair this without it looking very patchy.

Once that is done, there are numerous chews, bites and cuts throughout the quilt  (I think there are 12 in total).  I'm going to repair the biggest ones, see where I am time wise on the quilt, get approval or not from the customer to continue and then it'll be done.   Did I mention that this quilt is HUGE!  Which is going to make the hand stitching all that more fun!

Did I learn anything from this?  Of course!

Things I learned
1. NEVER agree to repair another quilt


I've repaired several over the years and while it is like detective work - first to find the problem, then to solve the problem - how to repair and where to find the missing fabrics.  That is the fun part. Then the actual work - well that's not so fun.  But put on good music or have good company and it will get done.

The good news about my urgent quilt - since no one will have seen it - I'm going to submit it to a magazine. Why not - the darn thing is done and I might as well get some use from it!

On that note, I'm out of here!

Have a great day!!!

Ciao!!!!